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It could be used to talk about other people while they were present, and was particularly useful when cruising with friends » 15. It excluded outsiders who wouldn’t be able to tell what you were talking about, and allowed gay people to conceal their sexuality. In his analysis of Polari, which he classifies « as a language variety, a sociolect, or an anti-language » 14, Paul Baker, professor in the Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language at Lancaster University, UK, explains that men used Polari « as a form of protection and secrecy. Whereas few gays were acquainted with the glossary’s 500 words, all knew that bona meant « good », camp « effeminate, outrageous », and cod « awful » 13. Yet, quoting Emma Donoghue’s Passions Between Women : British Lesbian Culture 1668-1801 (1993), Norton sustains that these « romantic friendships » have often been « invoked to neutralize and de-sexualize evidence » 11.ĤIn the 1950s and early 60s, British (especially London) gay men spoke Polari 12, a coded lexicon which allowed them to express their homosexuality publicly. Used in late 19th century New England, it was then a fashionable and « polite » phrase to qualify long-term relationships between two (high social status) women 10. The term « Boston marriage » was one of those appellations which, as Rebecca James puts it, avoided the « derogatory medical diagnosis » 9. In his essay A Critique of Social Constructionism and Post Modern Queer Theory, Rictor Norton explained that « all of the camp 6 talk of the eighteenth-century mollies 7, for example, was overheard by police constables who had infiltrated the molly houses such talk was virtually unknown outside the confines of a molly house » 8. Passing women (19 th century cross-dressing women who « passed » as men) were often recognized as such only at their deaths or during illness 5. Until the advent of gay rights in the 1950s-60s, homosexuality meant being subjected to a life of secret codes, special rules, and specific passwords to access private clubs. you know, or ‘that way’ », « one of them », or again « (s)he plays for the other team ». In the repressive and security-concerned Cold War environment 4, to talk about themselves, most gays and lesbians relied upon euphemisms such as « friends of Dorothy(‘s) », (after The Wizard of Oz, 1939, a classic musical popular with gay audiences), « whoopsies », « (s)he’s is a little.
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Until World War Two, research on what was then labeled the « language of homosexuality » focused on gender inversion, with homosexuality being regarded as a pathology characterized as sexual deviance or perversion : whereas heterosexual language equated with the appropriate gender, homosexual language displayed frequent inadequacies between the physical gender and the linguistic gender of the speaker. Most male homosexuals therefore kept their sexual orientations very much in the closet unless amidst their kin when they called each other female names-« Miss Kitten », « China Mary », « Primrose Mary », and « Dip-Candle Mary » 3-, a practice still familiar among contemporary gay men. Born as A Coded TalkģIn the Victorian era, « confess’d sodomytes » were punished with « forfeiture of all rights, including procreation »-in other words, castration, as related by Byrne R. When it comes to elaborate politically correct definitions of the « queer » universe, pink talk displays an extraordinary complexity of sexual orientations and subcultures, a possible means to compensate for linguistic deficiency and to claim a gay space on the social spectrum. Giving voice to new perceptions of gender identity while reclaiming offensive terms and a lifestyle of their own, gayspeakers are deliberately asserting cultural and, to some extent, militant ambitions. From the darker ages when homosexuality was at its best a sin and/or a perversion until the present environment of rainbow flags and gay prides, gayspeak has been used to transgress social norms, articulate particular needs and emotions, as well as reconstruct, or re-interpret, reality. Your hostess » 1.ĢFunny and provocative as it may seem, this message posted on Kinks & Queens, a gay Swedish website, not only reveals a visibility and culture that the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community was long compelled to hush, but it also confirms the existence of a lexicon not quite like standard English. 1« Bi, Gay, Open Minded, Lesbian, Drag, Fetish, Shemale, Glitz and Glamor… Total You.